the ever-living ghost of what once was
by tonberrys-and-kuchikopi
Summary: "War ate away at its soldiers like some acidic, slow-dripping poison, burning and stinging until it had chewed away all the parts of a person that felt the pain of loss most acutely. Or perhaps, war just made a person better practiced at hiding it. Some more so than others." 5 perspectives of Regulus Black's disappearance: Barty, Bellatrix, Snape, Narcissa, Walburga. Ren-verse.


**Note:** Though it's not necessary to read anything else, the most relevant related works in our overall series/'verse are "no answers for no questions asked" (Regulus discovers, researches, and steals a horcrux) and "grief is a house that disappears" (Sirius's reflections on death/grief, with a significant focus on Regulus, especially in the last half), for those who have not read them but are interested in those other perspectives of the situation.

Title is from "No One's Gonna Love You" by Band of Horses.

This one-shot was written by tonberrys.

* * *

 _ **Barty Crouch, Jr.  
**_ _\- July 1979 -_

Barty Crouch, Jr. knew what it looked like, having all the air squeezed out from your lungs, to claw helplessly at the walls of a cage and not understand why you felt that way, why you couldn't breathe, why it was happening to you.

Barty knew the tells of suffering.

* * *

Realisation did not crash in deafening waves, the day Barty learned of Regulus's disappearance, but rather in a slow, unbearable trickle. It was in the way Narcissa Malfoy asked him to tea: Charming, as always, but no common occurrence, in the absence of a Regulus-shaped excuse binding their interactions. Mrs. Black had not seen Regulus since the night of their return from Hogwarts just three days prior, Narcissa reported in a crackled tone that seemed a little too panicked for his liking, and at the same time, not panicked enough if Regulus's own _mother_ had lost track of him.

Unsettling words had echoed in Barty's mind for days - _Don't you think it's just a little bit illogical?_ \- _They're magical too_ -

 _I'm not going to run off_ -

Though Regulus had been clearly having some sort of post-NEWTs nervous breakdown, a few days ought to have cleared it up, and he was not the sort to vanish irresponsibly, even to clear his head. It felt wrong and looked wrong and _was_ wrong and

 _You can let go of my shoulders now_ -

On the pads of his fingers, Barty could feel the ghost of tense muscles, remembered all too well the way they had seemed to rip away from his hold, but maybe Barty had just let go. Set as he was in this strange fog, Barty could not recall with confidence - (and maybe, the pads of his fingers suggested, he did not want to know at all). Regulus, who could somehow lean in and pull away at the same time. Regulus, who shook off touch but calmed under Barty's own palm in a way that always made his heart flip; who smiled with his eyes even when he didn't smile with his mouth; who had a furious fire lit beneath his feet. They both did - a fire which licked at the their soles and their souls, and it was almost beautiful, the way people finally listened to words that were heated by action.

Regulus's feet had always been delicate against the coals. Perhaps they had burned him.

"Barty," Narcissa Malfoy was saying to him, watching the untouched tray of biscuits between them, "You will let us know the moment you hear from him, won't you?"

A certain ache burrowed in Barty's chest like a spiny rodent, all teeth and claws. "Of course," Barty responded, "and I would ask the same of you."

"This is very unlike him," Narcissa said with an unsettled frown, but Regulus's feet had scorched in the fire - and Barty knew he had surely gone to some metaphorical river to cool them, soon to return with the tough layer of certainty that came from being burned.

"It is," Barty agreed, a little miserably, and though he saw that misery reflected in Narcissa Malfoy's eyes, he did not feel particularly comforted.

With the soft clink of dishes, they fell to silence.

* * *

 _ **Bellatrix Black Lestrange  
**_ _\- August 1979 -_

The Death Eaters would stop for no one, living or dead, and Bellatrix could feel that steady-beating thrum at the back of her mind, the call to glory and to a purpose so much greater than any single life.

The Crouch boy had come into training looking like a kicked puppy, the week following her cousin's disappearance - all dullness and uncertainty where sharp-minded enthusiasm typically blazed in his manner. " _Your lesson is a private one today,"_ she had leveled bluntly, appreciating the way the boy seemed to visibly center himself at the pointed remark, looking as off-footedly uncomfortable as he was determined. Her lesson had been intentionally intense that day, one challenging curse after another, yet Crouch rose relentless to each - arguably more _over-eager_ than usual - and though it was most likely disrespectful to her absentee cousin, Bellatrix concluded that Regulus might have actually been holding his friend back. The youngest Black was agonisingly soft sometimes, for all the correctness of his words.

"That's a terrible thing to say!" Cissy would despair at her, were Bellatrix to say as much out loud, but even Bellatrix could recognise that timing and audience had some worth in consideration, at least when talking about the last bastion of your family's dying name; though as the weeks passed, she began to wonder if that name truly had been wasted on her Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion's brood.

"There's still no word of Regulus," Bellatrix snapped restlessly after dinner as the late August sun set within the frame of their library window, somewhere behind Rodolphus's lowered head. He didn't lift his eyes from the papers he was scribbling away at, which was more irritating than normal, today, and her voice tensed tighter still. "I assume you have heard nothing from the others?"

"If I had heard anything about your cousin, I'm certain you would have, as well," Rodolphus responded flatly, and Bellatrix darkened her scowl.

"There is something wrong. His disappearance could not have been for the Dark Lord's purposes - I would know, if it was - the Dark Lord would have _told me_ ," she began with gritting teeth, "and anything short of that smells of cowardice."

"Rabastan mentioned that some of the younger boys said something of Regulus not taking so well to the beverages at the graduation celebration. He may just be unreasonably embarrassed. He would not be the first to take a hiatus from societal obligations to let a humiliation pass, though it's quite a dramatic overreation to run off because you had too much to drink on your first night back from Hogwarts."

"That child would never run off by himself. Not without any money, any notification to his _family_. There's not a single charge to his Gringotts account, Aunt Walburga checked. I don't believe I've met a more codependent legal 'adult' in my life."

"I thought he was improving in that respect," Rodolphus said, as much a statement as it was an inquiry, finally pushing away his papers. "You told me he was borrowing some rather dark texts from our library by his own initiation and volition, just a few months ago."

Bellatrix felt an unwelcome pang, and though she did not want to, she remembered the rush of pride she had felt when he had asked after their library's more dangerous tomes not once, but twice in the span of late winter to late spring, despite the risk in sneaking away from his schoolmates at Hogsmeade. It was pleasantly uncharacteristic, seeing the youngest of them starting to show some initiative, if he was going to be heralded as the heir, following his father's death. That her cousins were so favoured by their gender rankled her more than she would openly admit - and she was not afraid to openly admit it - yet it was not blood alone, but rather name _and_ blood, that inheritance would always put first. Placing a child in any seat of power was foolish, but standing with Regulus in the manor's library, she had begun to think her strict training methods were finally sharpening him towards greatness, and he was at last rising towards the heights expected of her blood-favoured protege.

She had allowed her husband's statement to sit too long in the air, covering it pointedly with a huff. "I thought as much too, but if he did not vanish by the will of the Dark Lord, then he is either a traitorous coward or a suicidal coward. I do not see another option."

"If he's truly trying to outrun the Death Eaters, one could say he is both," Rodolphus said with an irreverent snort that most would consider unkind, but it was the least irritating thing he had done since the start of the conversation, and Bellatrix felt her annoyance lighten by some measure. "Assuming he's still alive, he'll probably come back to his senses. If he does so soon, maybe that flash of doubt might even be overlooked, given the situation with your family's name. He wasn't doing a _terrible_ job."

"No, he wasn't," Bellatrix admitted, her mouth responding almost without her permission, and again she felt something like - disappointment? Anger? Hurt, maybe, but she did not like the sound of 'hurt.' She had placed her trust in him, vouched for him, given him the opportunity to prove that they had not made a mistake, welcoming a child into their numbers, because he was meant to be something more grand than that. He was meant to learn, to grow under her tutelage, to come into his own in a manner befitting the House of Black, but instead, there was a glaring stillness to his absence that was humiliatingly difficult to explain away in a convincing manner - at least to anyone who knew the boy at all.

Maybe his embarrassment truly _had_ managed to outweigh eighteen years of passive codependence. Maybe that actually _did_ make more sense than Regulus Black ever daring to turn on his family. The boy was nothing if not loyal to his blood, squeamish or not. Maybe he had even done something as foolish as trying to apparate while he was drunk that night and splinched something important - maybe his lungs, a vital something or other - but no one had found the body yet. Morbid, perhaps, and not the sort of thing she wanted to suggest to Cissy, but Bellatrix feared there was little in the way of realistic explanations that her sister would want to hear. Or Aunt Walburga, for that matter.

As it was, they would wait in limbo. The Cause must go on.

* * *

 _ **Severus Snape  
**_ _\- October 1979 -_

War ate away at its soldiers like some acidic, slow-dripping poison, burning and stinging until it had chewed away all the parts of a person that felt the pain of loss most acutely.

Or perhaps, war just made a person better practiced at hiding it. Some more so than others.

Autumn was giving way to winter, and Crouch, for example, was strung more tightly than usual, vacillating between deadened distress and manic dedication to their increasingly frequent missions. Rosier's manner had hardened and sobered (if less noticeably than Crouch), as had the moods of Avery and Wilkes, while Mulciber was as flippant as he ever was. They had lost one of their number -

\- or rather, one of their number had vanished without a trace several months prior, and the ranks of pureblood high society were uncharacteristically hesitant to draw solid conclusions in the absence of evidence. It was perhaps Regulus Black's well-respected blood and name that afforded him this doubt, but even with such privileges aside, Severus, too, could acknowledge that the circumstances were strange. Barty had reported seeing him home, yet it seemed Walburga Black had spotted no sign of her son that night, nor had any other in the days and weeks to follow. Lucius had told him that even Narcissa knew nothing of her 'treasured little cousin's' whereabouts (as Lucius had described him), nor did it seem Bellatrix was privy - whether in the capacity of cousin or Death Eater mentor.

Severus had wondered, at first, whether Regulus might have scampered off to that detestable wretch he had once called a brother - a suspicion strengthened when Evan had mentioned the concerning remarks Regulus had been spouting quietly before Crouch spirited him away from the party - yet Black the Senior had reared no prideful boasts about ringleading the successful defection of his Death Eater brother, nor were there reports of the arrest that was certain to occur if Regulus truly _was_ stupid enough to trust in the protection of Sirius Black.

He had always been quite keen, Regulus, intelligent and perhaps more eager than he tried to let on; but the younger Black was altogether a breath of fresh air compared to the scum he was (once, Regulus would specify) related to, even if the occasional turn of his friend's expressions settled a little too closely to those of Severus's tormentor.

Possible though it was that Regulus had run, Severus no longer believed it had been to his brother - yet Regulus Black did not seem the sort to run towards nothingness and survive the attempt. The boy had been pampered, as far as Severus could tell, never left wanting for anything he had desired in his life, and a life on the run was far from charmed. Suicide was, perhaps, a possibility, despairing as Regulus had seemed when last they had all seen him in those small spurts, following his father's death - though no one seemed to want to admit aloud that he might have lost himself to his emotions so thoroughly.

Life had gone on in a way Severus would not have expected, having lost one of the few people in this world who he would consider a friend, but perhaps he should have expected it, for he had lost an even greater friend before the brunt of the war ever fell at his feet, opening wide the path that was now laid before him. _Lily._ (The vast, black vacuum was so unbearable, he could scarcely breathe-)

Regulus was unlike Lily in many ways, not the least of which was the fact that Severus was not the one who had driven Regulus away, if it was true that he had attempted to defect, rather than stumbled upon an accident or suddenly found himself struck with equal parts wanderlust and irresponsibility. The rumours had become quite unwieldy as the months passed, but that was bound to happen when there was nothing certain to grasp on beyond an ever-present absence. There was a sort of uncomfortable energy within their group, a _waiting_ sort of feeling that stretched in their words, and in the way Crouch always seemed to leave a space beside him, no matter how awkward the seating arrangement. Months later, it seemed a little naive to be holding so tightly when Regulus ought to have returned by now, were he able and willing, but there was a certain ache in Crouch's eyes that resonated a little too much, and Severus found he could not quite scoff.

War took its prisoners, but it was yet to be seen if Regulus Black was to be one of them.

* * *

 _ **Narcissa Black Malfoy  
**_ _\- November 1979 -_

There was a perceived dichotomy between joy and despair, yet Narcissa found herself experiencing both emotions so intensely and so completely that they muddled together, straightforward though they often were. With her face buried in her husband's chest, snuggled in bed with the blanket of night settling over them, Narcissa let herself fall into the soft pattering of his heart, thrumming like some steady mantra: life is warm, and precious, and present.

"Lucius," she began in a voice so quiet she almost didn't hear herself, but when she lifted her eyes to meet his, he was gazing down at her with a look that made her own heart flutter, and for a moment, the joy pulled forth and left her suffocating sadness smothered, if only for a moment. "I have news," she began as her pulse quickened and the corner of her mouth quivered upward, and with her own hand she found where his rested on her hip, then pressed it instead to her stomach, feeling the silk of her own nightgown between his fingers as they laced together. This was not how she had pictured her grand announcement - no, she had imagined something with much more pep and ritz to it, the unleashing of unbridled delight the moment Lucius arrived home - but the air of death hung over this holiday season, greying the sunshining clouds in her mind.

"I'm pregnant," she said with a watery smile, and the sudden lift in her husband's manner sent her heart leaping once again, though it was coloured with a sense of relief that stung more than she thought it would. (For years, they had been trying, had feared that maybe she couldn't…)

"That is wonderful news indeed," he said, his voice as genuine as the smile behind his eyes. "It's confirmed?"

Narcissa nodded, tears welling thick in her eyes even as she let out a little laugh, and a few of the tears blinked down her cheek.

Lucius thumbed one away. "A blessing, if ever there was one."

"The most wonderful blessing," she said in return, and for a moment, she wasn't certain if the salty burn in her eyes was pure happiness or something tangled with sadness - until she was again struck with an image of the first baby she had taken into her care so long ago: too tiny, with ink black hair and the slate grey eyes so many in their family shared. She had carried him around like the most fragile porcelain doll, and though he had grown into a fine young man, as so many baby boys do, she could not shake the memory of tiny infant fingers. Winter winds were roaring outside, and Narcissa did not know if her little cousin was out there in them or if- (he had stiffened cold, long before-)

Face contorting, she clamped a hand over her face, stiffening against the threat of a sob, but when Lucius stroked the side of her head, she could not help the slightly strangled sound that escaped. "I'm so happy, Lucius, happier than I've ever felt about anything - all I could do was smile after I got home from my appointment with the healer this morning, but," - she hated crying, hated the way her nose got all disgusting and her eyes burned and the way she had trouble controlling her breathing - "But I just started thinking about Regulus again, and how he's still missing, and Lucius, it has been five months - what if he isn't here when the baby is born?"

For a moment, Lucius just stroked her hair, and it wasn't an answer, but she had almost decided it was comforting enough when he responded, "I don't know where your cousin is, but it pains me to see you suffer, and I hope if he is out there somewhere, that he has a very good reason for doing this to those who care about him."

She was almost frustrated with the suggestion Regulus would abandon her on purpose when she preferred to think there was some terrible misunderstanding at play, or that he might have even been abducted by that dreadful traitor brother of his (she had stooped as low as to write to _him_ , of all people, in her fit of emotion earlier that day), but if it really was on purpose, it would be _more_ than frustrating - and the sentiment was sweet, even if Lucius was certainly hearing terrible things about Regulus from his fellow Death Eaters. To think the worst of him felt like a guilty thing when he had never behaved in a manner that suggested the worst, yet she could not help that stormy feeling in her chest, the unfairness of it, the sting of _not knowing_ -

"Regulus loves all of us," - _Loved? No, loves_ \- "He's loyal. It just doesn't make any sense."

"You should not stress yourself," Lucius crooned, "Let us worry about Regulus. You focus on our child."

Narcissa started to nod, then took pause, turning a more keen glance up to her husband's face. "If you find him, you won't hurt him, will you? Or let anyone else? He's-"

"If he has turned on us-"

"-If he has turned on us, I need to know why," Narcissa interrupted, feeling her breath coming a little too quickly, but when her husband nodded, her pattering rabbit heart began to calm again. She had said as much to Bella, too, when first the frustrations began to show, but Narcissa knew how her elder sister could be. If Lucius was monitoring, too… "But surely, he has not," she said again, as much to herself as to him.

"Surely, he has not," Lucius echoed evenly.

Narcissa smiled into his chest as she rested a hand on her stomach again, thinking of the tiny baby growing inside of her - a boy, probably, with bright blonde hair, just like Lucius, a shade lighter than her own…

"Our child will be so perfect," she said wistfully. Everything could be perfect again - more perfect than ever, with a new baby in the family for the first time in a long time - all her cousin had to do was come home safely, complete their dwindling family again, and in a few years, perhaps he would have a little one too, one that could toddle after her own.

Clenching her eyes closed, she imagined it was so.

* * *

 _ **Walburga Black  
**_ _\- July 1980 -_

The silence was screaming, beating against Walburga's skull, but no one else seemed to hear it, the way they they sat so stiff and calm at her child's - _her son, her only son left, her hope, their treasure_ \- her precious son's funeral like the garden of statues peppering the grounds of Highgate.

Arcturus was speaking at the front, but she couldn't hear him over their hollow expressions, these people who didn't know, didn't care, couldn't tell her _anything_ about what happened to her child, who was responsible, what vile scum to turn her anger on, why her _HEIR_ was now _DEAD_ with _NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT_ \- they did _NOTHING_ -

Their eyes were fixed on her now, empty of meaning, and she realised then that she was standing, that her breath was ragged and her throat was raw, and that Arcturus had the stoniest look of them all. On her arms, Walburga felt two hands clasp, and her jerking look revealed Lucretia just beside her, stone-eyes grey and dark hair greying beneath her mourning attire, looking a great deal like Walburga and even more like Orion, especially when she had that stern look on her face, but Orion was dead too-

"Let _GO OF ME_!" Walburga shrieked, hand moving for her wand only to find it wasn't there, and Lucretia was already guiding her out into the lobby. Fury burned in her blood, and as they passed the small wooden table by the doorway, she swiped a vase of flowers to the floor to hear the crash of shattering glass, but it did not make her feel any better, just made her think of her first son, that _waste of her love_ \- " _THEY TOOK HIM FROM ME!_ " she bellowed, the wail scattering a few birds from a tree just outside, though she scarcely even felt the July heat as she was shuffled outside. (The first was a stain, a gutted crack in her heart, but Regulus - her son - the last -) "WHY ARE WE LEAVING?!"

Lucretia loosened her hold when they reach the bottom of the steps, and in that quiet way she had, led them to the side of the building, a bench just opposite one of the huge pillars and surrounded by greenery, but it was too quiet out here, too-

"You need to sit down," Lucretia was saying, and Walburga had half a mind to kick that bench over, but instead she snapped back.

"What I _NEED_ is my _SON_!"

"I know-"

"YOU _DON'T_ KNOW! _You've never had a son!_ " Walburga screamed, looking again like she might give the bench a good kick, but Lucretia was in the way with a chilling expression carved from stone. " _YOU NEVER HAD ANY CHILD!_ "

Whatever grievous blow the words had struck did not show in her cousin's manner, save for the blaze in Lucretia's eyes and the subtle shake of her hands. The stoicism just made it worse - if she could just react -

"I cannot handle this right now," Lucretia said simply, shaking her head and stepping back a few steps before turning to leave.

( _I cannot handle this right now - I cannot handle_ you _right now -_ )

The bench was too solid to give way to a kick even if she struck it with one, but she didn't really want to kick it; what she wanted was to blast it to dust, but Lucretia must have taken her wand during the funeral - a thought punctuated with a throaty shriek. When she crumbled beside the stone, she pounded her fist against the slate surface, but she still didn't feel any better. Last June, she had still been dressed in her mourning cap for Orion when Regulus had vanished, and a year later, she wondered if she could ever truly take it off. Her husband's funeral had been such a solemn, deadened affair, one she had scarcely held together, but no one could tell her a single thing about her son - her obedient, dutiful son -

When Lucretia's footsteps faded again, silence clawed its way back into her head.

All she had to do was out-scream the silence.

* * *

 _ **Barty Crouch, Jr.  
**_ _\- July 1980 -_

A person left shards of themselves when they died, vanished from their own lives, and shards of Regulus were scattered all around. Barty felt them crunch beneath his feet when he stood with the Lestranges, tearing their enemies apart - an all too common occurrence, these days, more common than his own friends - or when he tended to Canopus, the owl Regulus had left behind. He was a beautiful creature (just as Regulus had been, quiet and thoughtful): a golden masked owl, with its pale, heart-shaped face and speckled feathers. Barty already had an owl from his own years at school, but Mrs. Black had not seemed in a fit state to care for anything at the time, and her visible deterioration at Regulus's funeral had only served to reinforce his conclusions.

Both owls had returned from their hunting for the night, long into what must be the wee hours of the morning, but Barty could not calm his mind, could never slow the whirring for long enough to lose consciousness, but tonight, he had forgone his sleeping draught in favour of the memories.

The funeral itself had been uneventful, with the exception of Regulus's mother, but Barty could not hold her grief against her when he had felt like screaming too. All day, suffocation had closed in, and foolish though it was, he kept waiting for Regulus to rush in and cancel the funeral because he wasn't dead, revealing in the end that it was all some uncharacteristically amusing misunderstanding at the root of all their suffering, one he was certain to regale for them all at length. (No, Regulus was not the regaling sort, even theoretically - but a wry, sobered telling, without a doubt.)

Every second had felt hollow with uncertainty and a lack of closure Barty thought might never lift. There had been no body in the casket, Barty knew, and if anyone knew where that body was, living or dead, they had said nothing of it in a little over a year. (A year - Regulus would have turned nineteen, the week before.) Bellatrix had not spoken of her cousin directly since he disappeared, but in some respect, however angry it ought to have made him, that truthfully made it easier to hurtle forward, to think about nothing in those moments except for his broadening menu of perfectly executed justice - swift or slow, clean or brutal, passionate or businesslike…

His Ministry job was tedious, his Death Eater responsibilities consuming, but everything after felt empty in a way he just couldn't shake, some gaping hole he couldn't fill. They were supposed to be doing this together, he and Regulus, through the war and forever after that, whatever marriages they might've been shuffled into eventually. His friend had always been so hard to read, attractions muddled in deep companionship and unclear lines, but however painful it sometimes was - however much some part of him wanted _more_ \- what Barty had relied on with confidence was that Regulus would have remained at his side. Regulus would have endured the last stretch of this war, would never have _betrayed_ him, whatever the less flattering rumours might suggest (and whatever thoughtless, grief-stricken remarks might have escaped that night, for Barty knew Regulus could not possibly have _acted_ upon them - he was much too bright - much too attached -)

With a fresh ache in his chest, Barty turned over towards the perched owls (still not put to their cages in the other room), and to the soft song of their peppered hoots, he stared at the haze-smeared sky, feeling hurt-despair-loneliness reach inside with jagged, clamping hooks.

* * *

Barty Crouch, Jr. knew what it felt like, having all the air squeezed out from your lungs, to claw helplessly at the walls of a cage and not understand why you felt that way, why you couldn't breathe, why it was happening to you.

Barty knew now the reality of suffering.


End file.
